The invention provides a pressure swing adsorption process for the separation of a pressurized feed gas supply containing one or more strongly adsorbable components and at least one less strongly adsorbable product gas in a multiple bed system. The feed gas is supplied to a feed end of an adsorbent bed containing solid adsorbent material(s), which preferentially adsorbs the more strongly adsorbable component(s) and withdrawing the least strongly adsorbable product component from an exit end of the adsorber bed, producing in cycle including steps in which the continuous feed gas sequentially co-currently flows through each of the adsorber beds to produce gas product using continuous feed gas, pressurization steps, pressure equalization steps, blowdown step(s), and purge step(s).
The product gas of the process is preferably hydrogen although the process can be extended to other separation processes such as helium purification, natural gas upgrading, CO2 production from synthesis gas or other source containing CO2 in the supply feed or in other PSA processes for coproduction of H2 and CO2. One of the novel features of the present invention is the introduction of a new and advanced cycle to a six bed PSA system having four equalization steps to achieve enhanced H2 recovery. This cycle can be further modified and utilized to operate the PSA system in a turndown mode with a relatively small reduction in throughput, thereby allowing the PSA system to operate with as few as four beds, yet maintaining a throughput of hydrogen above 90%. Another novel feature of the invention is the layered adsorbent, which can be utilized in the beds. These layered configurations of carbon and/or zeolite components differ from another layer of similar adsorbent material in particle size. These layered configurations of the bed materials combined and the PSA cycles provide a synergistic effect with an overall improvement in hydrogen recovery and throughput of 1-2% over conventional PSA cycles.